Why do testicles hang the way they do? Is there an adaptive function to the female orgasm? What does it feel like to want to kill yourself? Does “free will” really exist? And why is the penis shaped like that anyway? In Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?, the research psychologist and award-winning columnist Jesse Bering features more than thirty of his most popular essays from Scientific American and Slate, as well as two new pieces, that take readers on a bold and captivating journey through some of the most taboo issues related to evolution and human behavior.

Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us

In his eye-opening new book, Perv, the award-winning columnist and psychologist Jesse Bering argues that we are all sexual deviants on one level or another. As Bering takes us into the lives of a woman who falls madly in love with the Eiffel Tower, a young man addicted to seductive sneezes, and a pair of deeply affectionate identical twins, among others, he challenges us to move beyond our judgments and attitudes toward "deviant" sex and consider the alternative: What would happen if we rise above our fears and revulsions and accepted our true natures?

The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life

Why is belief so hard to shake? Despite our best attempts to embrace rational thought and reject superstition, we often find ourselves appealing to unseen forces that guide our destiny, wondering who might be watching us as we go about our lives, and imagining what might come after death. In this lively and masterfully argued new book, Jesse Bering unveils the psychological underpinnings of why we believe.

American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics

Dan Savage has always had a loyal audience, thanks to his syndicated sex-advice column Savage Love but since the incredible global success of his It Gets Better project, his profile has skyrocketed. Savage is recognized as someone whose opinions about our culture, politics, and society should not only be listened to but taken seriously. Now, in American Savage, he writes on topics ranging from marriage, parenting, and the gay agenda to the Catholic Church, sex education, and the obesity epidemic.

Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America

Dan Savage eviscerates the right-wing conservatives as he commits each of the Seven Deadly Sins himself (or tries to) and finds those everyday Americans who take particular delight in their sinful pursuits. Combine a unique history of the Seven Deadly Sins, a new interpretation of the biblical stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, and enough Bill Bennett, Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan, Dr. Laura, and Bill O'Reilly bashing to more than make up for their incessant carping, and you've got the most provocative book of the fall.

The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant

The syndicated sex-advice columnist of "Savage Love" tells a no-holds-barred story of an ordinary American couple who want to have a baby, except that in this case, the couple happens to be Savage and his boyfriend.

The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family

Dan Savage’s mother wants him to get married. His boyfriend, Terry, says “no thanks” because he doesn’t want to act like a straight person. Their six-year-old son, D.J., says his two dads aren’t “allowed” to get married but that he’d like to come to the reception and eat cake. Throw into the mix Dan’s straight siblings, whose varied choices form a microcosm of how Americans are approaching marriage these days, and you get a rollicking family memoir that will have everyone—gay or straight, right or left, single or married—howling with laughter.

What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire

When it comes to sex, common wisdom holds that men roam while women crave closeness and commitment. But in this provocative, headline-making book, Daniel Bergner turns everything we thought we knew about women's arousal and desire inside out. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with renowned behavioral scientists, sexologists, psychologists, and everyday women, he forces us to reconsider long-held notions about female sexuality.

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life

An essential exploration of why and how women's sexuality works - based on groundbreaking research and brain science - that will radically transform your sex life into one filled with confidence and joy. Researchers have spent the last decade trying to develop a "pink pill" for women to function like Viagra does for men. So where is it? Well, for reasons this book makes crystal clear, that pill will never exist - but as a result of the research that's gone into it, scientists in the last few years have learned more about how women's sexuality works than we ever thought possible.

A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire

Informed by 18,000 interviews and bold insight from neuroscientists Sai Gaddam and Ogi Ogas, this groundbreaking study will likely rock many people’s perceptions of what stimulates males and females. The surprising results not only demonstrate people’s needs, but the needs of people’s mates as well.

More than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

Can you love more than one person? Can you have multiple romantic partners without jealousy or cheating? Absolutely! Polyamorous people have been paving the way through trial and painful error. Now the new book More Than Two can help you find your own way.

Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships

Relationship expert and bestselling author Tristan Taormino offers a bold new strategy for creating loving, lasting relationships. Drawing on in-depth interviews with over a hundred women and men, Opening Up explores the real-life benefits and challenges of all styles of open relationships - from partnered non-monogamy to solo polyamory. With her refreshingly down-to-earth style and sharp wit, Taormino offers solutions for making an open relationship work, including tips on dealing with jealousy, negotiating boundaries, finding community, parenting and time management.

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science - as well as religious and cultural institutions - has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing....

Open All the Way: Confessions from My Open Marriage

Open All the Way marks Sadie Smythe's foray into long-range storytelling. Most well known for her outspoken commentary on her blog, about relationship paradigms and the navigation through her own alternative arrangement with her husband Scott, Sadie is very excited to offer her loyal readers a larger-lensed view into her openly married life. Each chapter of Open All the Way is an individual story in itself. But the combined ensemble compellingly chronicles her journey.

The Thing I Didn't Know I Didn't Know

Russel Middlebrook is 23 years old, gay, and living in trendy Seattle, but life isn't keeping up with the hype. Most of his friends have a direction in life - either ruthlessly pursuing their careers or passionately embracing their own aimlessness. But Russel is stuck in place. All he knows is that crappy jobs, horrible dates, and pointless hook-ups just aren't cutting it anymore. What's the secret? What does everyone else know that he doesn't?

What's Wrong with Homosexuality?

For the last 20 years, John Corvino - widely known as the author of the weekly column "The Gay Moralist" - has traversed the country responding to moral and religious arguments against same-sex relationships. In this timely audiobook, he shares that experience - addressing the standard objections to homosexuality and offering insight into the culture wars more generally. Is homosexuality unnatural? Does the Bible condemn it? Are people born gay (and should it matter either way)? Corvino approaches such questions with precision, sensitivity, and good humor.

Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind

What is it like to be a preacher or rabbi who no longer believes in God? In this expanded and updated edition of their groundbreaking study, Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola comprehensively and sensitively expose an inconvenient truth that religious institutions face in the new transparency of the information age - the phenomenon of clergy who no longer believe what they publicly preach.

Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want from Sex - and How to Get It

In Sexual Intelligence, Dr. Marty Klein shows how our ideas about sex - and ourselves - are more important than a perfect body or exotic techniques. With many engaging examples from his thirty-year private practice, Marty provides a robust, practical perspective that makes it impossible for people to fail at sex - because they don't aim for success.

Never has the subject of men's health attracted more attention than in this era of optimal living. In this revised and updated edition of Men's Private Parts: A Pocket Reference to Prostate, Urologic, and Sexual Health, the author, known for years to readers of the Men's Health newsletter as "Dr. Private Parts", tackles men's most delicate health questions with reassuring authority.

This is Your Brain on Sex: The Science Behind the Search for Love

In the wake of a divorce, science writer and single mother Kayt Sukel made herself a guinea pig in the labs of some unusual love experts to find out. This Is Your Brain on Sex is her lively and hilarious examination of the big questions about love and sex, previously published in hardcover as Dirty Minds. Each chapter of this edgy romp through the romantic brain looks at a different aspect of love above the belt.

Atheism for Dummies

Atheism For Dummies offers a brief history of atheist philosophy and its evolution, explores it as a historical and cultural movement, covers important historical writings on the subject, and discusses the nature of ethics and morality in the absence of religion. A simple, yet intelligent exploration of an often misunderstood philosophy.

Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad

In 2005, Dan Bucatinsky and his partner, Don Roos, found themselves in an L.A. delivery room, decked out in disposable scrubs from shower cap to booties, to welcome their adopted baby girl - launching their frantic yet memorable adventures into fatherhood. Two and a half years later, the same birth mother - a heroically generous, pack-a-day teen with a passion for Bridezilla marathons and Mountain Dew - delivered a son into the couple’s arms.

It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living

It Gets Better is a collection of expanded essays and new material from celebrities, everyday people, and teens who have posted videos of encouragement, as well as new contributors who have yet to post videos to the site. While many of these teens couldn’t see a positive future for themselves, others can. We can show LGBT youth the levels of happiness, potential, and positivity their lives will reach if they can just get through their teen years.

Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

Why are all the major religions consumed with sex? What makes sex so important, whether Buddhism or Islam, Christianity or Mormonism? What is the impact of religion on human sexuality? This book explores this and more. It ventures into territory that has never been examined. You will be surprised at how much religion has influenced your sexuality, who you marry, the pleasure you get or don't get from sex, and what you can do about it.

Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage

Finally, a book about open marriage that grapples with the problems surrounding monogamy and fidelity in an honest, heartfelt, and non-fringe manner. Jenny Block is your average girl next door, a suburban wife and mother for whom married life never felt quite right. While many books on this topic presuppose that the listener is ready to embrace an "alternative lifestyle", Block operates from the assumption that most couples who are curious about or engaged in open marriages are in fact more like her - normal people who question whether monogamy is right for them.

Publisher's Summary

Why do testicles hang the way they do? Is there an adaptive function to the female orgasm? What does it feel like to want to kill yourself? Does “free will” really exist? And why is the penis shaped like that anyway? In Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?, the research psychologist and award-winning columnist Jesse Bering features more than thirty of his most popular essays from Scientific American and Slate, as well as two new pieces, that take readers on a bold and captivating journey through some of the most taboo issues related to evolution and human behavior. Exploring the history of cannibalism, the neurology of people who are sexually attracted to animals, the evolution of human body fluids, the science of homosexuality, and serious questions about life and death, Bering astutely covers a generous expanse of our kaleidoscope of quirks and origins.

With his characteristic irreverence and trademark cheekiness, Bering leaves no topic unturned or curiosity unexamined, and he does it all with an audaciously original voice. Whether you’re interested in the psychological history behind the many facets of sexual desire or the evolutionary patterns that have dictated our current mystique and phallic physique, Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? is bound to create lively discussion and debate for years to come.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That??

The author's own experiences realizing he was gay at a young age and relating what it was like growing up gay. I love his total openness in relating his own experiences and beliefs. He lays it right out there, like more people should.

Have you listened to any of Jesse Bering???s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

Any additional comments?

I enjoyed the book. Perhaps not all of his research is scientifically spot on as some reviewers pointed out, but most of it is, plus the story was very entertaining and it left me with some new perspectives. I love books that really make you think and this book accomplishes that!

This is my first book by Jesse Bering and will not be the last. He writes fairly succinct chapters an a variety or topics, all well researched. I found his narration excellent - for me there is something special added when a passionate author narrates their work. I also loved his sense of humour, although if you are easily offended, listen anyway :)

Jesse Bering answers all those nagging little question about human gentiles, they reason why they're shaped like that, adding not only humor but his own brand of "punny" humor.

What did you like best about this story?

While some of the research and science - not much, just some - wasn't my cup of tea, Jesse Bering did an excellent job of creating an excellent flow from one subject to the next.

Which scene was your favorite?

Although I can't say I have a favorite chapter, the fact that Jesse Bering read his own book was an extra pleasure. Mr. Bering has a great reading voice; not to fast or too slow.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Many of the authors puns were well placed and created many laugh out loud moments. I probably looked like an idiot to the other drivers, laughing while doing my commute. He's a quick wit and the humor was well placed.

This book was a lot of fun. It's sort of a "questions you were afraid to ask" kind of book and Jesse does an excellent job narrating it. It's full of cheesy but funny puns and addresses all sorts of issues you've likely never read about but were interested in. Definitely worth a listen!

Jesse Bering lays out years of research in an informative and entertaining fashion that occasionally made me say "eww, who would volunteer to do that?" and often made me laugh. Jesse pun's and humor kept the book moving and I always looked forward to the next installment.

Not all the topics were comfortable but isnt that really what makes us want more and how we grow?

I found the insights into how somethings were researched to be very interesting. Insights into the authors awareness of his own sexuality was equally interesting.

I purchased the book because the title was catchy and I needed to use a credit. I quickly found it was a well spent credit. Once again, the author reading his own work was a total bonus.

Okay, you got me! I have to admit that the title of the book caught my attention, but once I got into it, I realized that this book is chock full of information on the body and body parts that I typically don’t give much thought to. I do now!

The book goes into good enough detail on how and why humans do what we do, and how we evolved to be that way. I found it to be very informative and it kept my attention throughout.Guess what?... I did find out why the penis is shaped that way! And, that alone is worth the price of the book.

If you want a book that talks about and explains so many of the body functions that usually only bring about a blush to ones face, or have you speaking in code “down there”, “private parts” or “unmentionables”, then this book is for you.

The author, Jesse Bering, writes about everything under the sun from anal sex, bestiality, foot fetishes, gay/straight stuff, religion, death and dying… and so much more. Plus, you’ll even find out why the penis is shaped that way. (smile!)

Enjoy the book and get over some “hangups” that you might have about why people are the way that they are, and that when it comes down to it, there’s really nothing wrong with it and it’s nature playing its role the way that nature does.

What made the experience of listening to Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? the most enjoyable?

After the first couple chapters I made my husband listen with me in the car, and watching the expression on his face of "WOW, I never thought of that!" was the most enjoyable. (aside from feeling that way myself)

What was one of the most memorable moments of Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That??

While this has nothing to do with the book - I was waiting in the car and listening to the book with the volume a little too loud, and then an elderly woman walked past my open window with a distinctive look on her face...LOL

Which scene was your favorite?

The chapter that discussed tribal rituals about ingesting semen as a source of masculinity and vitality.

It is rare that a scientific book contains anecdotes from the author, and this one does in Jesse's illuminating perspective. His narration is clever and endearing. Topics are well-researched and conveyed in an interesting manner. The book is smart, thought-provoking and at times, deliriously funny. Cannot wait for his next book.

If there is ever an opportunity to sit next to Jesse Bering at a dinner party, I'm sure that will be the best seat in the house!

My boyfriend, a very soon to be doctor, and I listened to this one on a road trip. It's very well-written-- he makes a lot of big words seem somehow accessible and unpretentious-- and unique. I consider myself pretty well-read and there were tons of studies and ideas featured that I have never heard of before. It gives you a whole new perspective on sexual deviants and functions that we take for granted.

Since the title mentions "being human," I was expecting a broader focus, but I did appreciate Bering's matter-of-fact manner in writing and speaking. Once I found myself disagreeing with him, but not about his scientific research - just his "suspicions." And he mentions readers' feedback, so I know that if I choose to write to him, he'll actually read it.

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